Flurry

Microsoft's Windows Phone platform, and its Lumia phones, may have been bested only by Apple and Samsung in holiday sales. According to a new research report, during the week of December 19-25, new activations of those phones accounted for 5.8% of all smartphones worldwide, placing Microsoft in third place ahead of every other smartphone maker aside from Apple and Samsung.

We all know that there is a great war going on right now in the smartphone world. Apple and iOS continue to be taking most parts of the world by storm, where as in North America RIM's numbers have plummeted over the last year or two. So where does that leave Windows Phone?

Well it would seem that for most people it is apps that are important and that is where Flurry comes in, where we found this interesting report. Flurry is an analytic company that tracks developer support across all the major smartphone operating systems. The statistics are easy for Flurry to trace as when a company creates a new project in Flurry Analytics it will need to download specific SDKs.

If someone said that the average Windows Phone user spent more time a day with mobile apps than on the Internet, would you believe them?

The analytic company Flurry has concluded a consumption survey and has found that on average, consumers spend 81 minutes a day on mobile apps versus 74 minutes with web consumption. Same time last year, web consumption outpaced mobile by 21 minutes.

The usage chart compares the average number of minutes consumers spend per day in mobile native apps vs. the web. For mobile apps, Flurry tracks iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and J2ME. And for the web, their figures include the open web, Facebook and the mobile web. It all shakes out to mean that the average user spends 9% more time using mobile apps than the Internet.

Flurry goes a little further and breaks down how we are using mobile apps. Games led the usage with 47% with social networking coming in second with 32%. These two categories dominated usage with a meager representation with news and entertainment.

Earlier we reported that data consumption had increased with smartphones so it shouldn't be too strange to see the time spent on smartphones has increased as well. As mobile as we've become and as our Windows Phones more effective/efficient, I can see apps getting more and more of our time. But more than the Internet?

So what's your daily consumption? Do you spend more time with apps than on the Internet?

According to the analytic firm Flurry Inc., Windows Phone 7 development has seen a boost in development activity. The likely culprit behind this increase is the partnership with Nokia. Regardless, the boost lifts Microsoft passed Blackberry but still behind Android and Apple with respect to developer activity.

Flurry periodically measures the relative support that developers dedicate to various platforms by tracking new application starts. A week after the announcement of the Nokia/Microsoft partnership, Flurry measured a 66% increase in Windows Phone 7 project starts.

There is still plenty of ground to cover. Apple leads app projects with 69% of the apps and Android has 25%. Blackberry development represents 2% of the app projects. From their blog, Flurry sees the boost in developer activity as a positive.

From Flurry’s point of view, this week’s spike in Windows Phone 7 developer activity shows that developers not only believe Nokia has given Microsoft Windows Phone7 a shot in the arm, but also that Nokia and Microsoft together can build a viable ecosystem.

One of the keys for success that Microsoft identified early on was developer support. Support that seems to be increasing with Microsoft's new partnership with Nokia.